Your Wet Basement Might Be Making You Sick

The effects of having a wet basement might already be quite apparent—damage to your home, potential damage to the foundation, and obviously losing anything that might come in contact with the moisture. These alone should be enough to make you want to call a basement waterproofer, but the one that truly convinces people there’s a problem is knowing that a wet basement could actually be making you or your family sick.

A bunch of water leaking into your basement or pooling up in a corner is just asking to breed bacteria, which you might think is no big deal. After all, as long as you avoid contact with it, you should be okay, right? Well, not quite. Whether it’s just water dripping from a leaky pipe or it’s full-on basement flooding, a little bit of water damage can cause some big health issues.

Respiratory Issues

One of the big concerns with water seeping into your basement is the threat of mold growth. Mold takes sometimes as little as 24 hours to start growing, and from there mold spores can get into the air and make their ways into your lungs. From there, you could experience many different symptoms:

Nasal and sinus congestion, runny nose

Respiratory problems, like wheezing and difficulty breathing or chest tightness

Coughing

Throat irritation

Sneezing

There has also been a proven increase in the chances of developing asthma when exposed to certain types of mold, and it certainly won’t help anyone who already has asthma. If you notice that you or a family member is experiencing these types of issues and medicine isn’t helping, it’s worth taking a closer look at your basement.

Cancer

Radon is a cancer-causing radioactive gas that you can’t see or smell. Sometimes cracks in the foundation allow radon to seep up into your home, exposing everyone in it to continuously unsafe levels of it. The best way to deal with this is to test your home regularly for radon with a kit you can buy at the store. If you find that radon levels are high in your home (the range goes from 1-4, and anything above 1 is high), then it’s time to call a radon mitigator in your area and also deal with foundation repair to prevent the gas from continuing to enter your home.

Asthma

Asthma can be irritated from mold, as we mentioned, but it can also flare up from rat cockroach waste. Nobody like to imagine these crawling critters in their home, but they’re particularly attracted to wet, damp spaces. Their fecal matter can cause asthma flare ups, especially in children, and it’s generally an unpleasant environment to have.

Take charge of your health and your home with basement waterproofing to prevent any of these problems from ever happening. AA Action Waterproofing is able to help you keep your home safe and dry, so call us today for a free quote: 888-922-5517.